Elizabeth Cary, Viscountess Falkland


Elizabeth Cary, Viscountess Falkland, was an English poet, dramatist, translator, and historian. She is the first woman known to have written and published an original play in English. From an early age, she was recognized as an accomplished scholar by contemporary writers.

Biography

Early Life

Elizabeth Tanfield was born in 1585 or 1586 at Burford Priory in Oxfordshire, the only child of Sir Lawrence Tanfield and his wife Elizabeth Symondes of Norfolk. Her father was a lawyer, who eventually became a judge and Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer. Her parents were very supportive of their daughter's love for reading and learning, which was so great that her mother forbade the servants from giving Elizabeth candles to read by at night.
Elizabeth's parents employed a French instructor for her when she was five years old. Five weeks later, she was speaking fluently. After excelling in French, she insisted on learning Spanish, Italian, Latin, Hebrew, and Transylvanian on her own, without an instructor. Her accomplishment as a scholar was stressed by Michael Drayton and by John Davies of Hereford in works they dedicated to her.
At the age of fifteen, her father arranged her marriage to Sir Henry Cary, later made Viscount Falkland, who married her because she was an heiress. When she finally moved into her husband's home, her mother-in-law informed Cary that she was forbidden to read, so she instead chose to write poetry in her spare time.
It was not until seven years after they were married that Lord and Lady Falkland had children; they would go on to have a total of eleven: Catherine, Lucius, Lorenzo, Anne, Edward, Elizabeth, Lucy, Victoria, Mary, Henry, and Patrick.
In 1622 her husband was appointed Lord Deputy of Ireland and Elizabeth Cary joined him in Dublin. There she socialized with prominent local Catholics and patronized Catholic writers. This may have contributed to her conversion to Catholicism.
Five of her children joined the church in their lifetime.

Later years

By 1625 Elizabeth Cary was disinherited by her father just before he died for using part of her jointure to meet expenses. The money that was initially meant for her had gone instead to her eldest son, Lucius, who was strapped with debt. The disinheritance came after she had tried to fiscally boost her husband, who had been struggling to pay for his lands in Ireland. This same year she returned from Ireland and Cary publicly announced her conversion to Catholicism in 1626, which resulted in her husband's attempted and unsuccessful divorce, although he did deny her access to their children. Despite several orders of the Privy Council, he refused her a maintenance in an apparent effort to force her to recant.
Her husband died in 1633, and she sought to regain custody of her children. She was questioned in the Star Chamber for kidnapping her sons, but although she was threatened with imprisonment there is no record of any punishment. In 1634 Elizabeth, Mary, Lucy and Anne Cary were converted to the Catholic faith by John Fursdon who was their mother's confessor. Edward Barrett, Lord Barrett reported this to King Charles I and he agreed for the four girls to be removed from their mother's house and taken to Great Tew. Great Tew had been inherited by her son Lucius Cary who was then Viscount Falkland.
Elizabeth Cary was an avid and secretive reader from a young age, in part due to her attempt to understand Protestantism. Part of her understanding of religious texts was directly influenced by her understanding of literature. Once fully in-step with Catholicism, she dedicated herself to guiding her children towards the Roman Catholic Church by "opening channels for God and paths for her children, but making sure she didn't block the road by loitering in the middle of it herself". Her eldest daughter, Catherine, reported an apparition of the Virgin Mary while on her deathbed. This apparent sighting deeply moved Cary and only furthered her mission to convert all of her children, as Catherine had still been a Protestant at the time of her death. By the end of Cary's life her mission had become partially successful; four of her daughters went on to become Benedictine nuns, and one of her sons joined the priesthood.
In 1639, Elizabeth Cary, Lady Falkland died in London. She is buried in Henrietta Maria's Chapel in Somerset House.

Writing

According to the biography written by her daughter, Elizabeth Cary believed that poetry was the highest literary form. Many of her poems have been lost over time but her dedication to poetry is evident throughout her plays. Her first play The Tragedy of Mariam, the Fair Queen of Jewry was written in iambic pentameter with the use of couplets throughout as well as the use of irony. The change in pattern and rhyme scheme show multiple sonnets throughout the play, and the irony is a traditional element of the sonnet. The Tragedy of Mariam was progressive for its time because it was the first original English play to be published by a woman.
Elizabeth Cary then wrote The History of the Life, Reign, and Death of Edward II which was a political fable based on historical events, which was not published until 1680, long after her death. The text uses the story of King Edward II and his powerful favorites Gaveston and Spencer as an analogy for King Charles, who in the 1620s was in conflict with Parliament about the power granted to the Duke of Buckingham. Cary was in constant contact with Buckingham and his family and writing The History may have been her way to cope with having to constantly rely on Buckingham and his family. She focuses on the idea of favouritism much throughout the piece and how it can lead to disastrous outcomes. Other than the Tragedy of Mariam and the History, much of Falkland's original work has been lost, including most of her poetry.

Works